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Fannish Friday: tropes/plotlines you can't be normal about
This post is inspired by a conversation I was having the other day on Mastodon about how I can't just accept soulmate AUs as a fun fantasy thing like, idk, time travel or amnesia fic or something simply because it just reads as too Calvinist to me. I am Team Free Will! I am horrified at the idea of choices being made for me by the universe or God or whatever! I will read a soulmate AU if it's written by a writer I already love, but I am never going to seek it out, and it's always going to be a bit ew to me.
And that is so specific to me! If you have zero Calvinist background--if, say, your background is East Asian and you associate soulmate AUs with, like, red string of fate stuff instead of people being predestined to burn in hell for all eternity--you are going to have a very different reaction to soulmate AUs!
So that got me thinking about other tropes or plotlines that I just can't approach like a normal person because of my own personal baggage.
And here's the ultimate one: what happens to Donna on Doctor Who.
Donna was one of my favorite eras of the show--I found her completely delightful. But I have never been able to rewatch her season or even reblog gifsets on Tumblr because of how upset I was that the Doctor ended up wiping her memories in order to save her life.
Why? Because at that time my grandmother was dying of Alzheimer's. The idea of wiping someone else's memories, particularly without their consent, even if it was for "their own good" was so horrifying to me that it ruined Donna's run.
I think objectively that was a gross plotline, but I don't think most other people had the intense emotional reaction to it that I did.
But I will never be okay with memory alteration treated as okay. I just won't.
So what's a trope or storyline that you bring baggage to that completely shapes how you see it?
(Obviously the answer is: every trope or storyline because we all bring baggage to everything, but I'm talking specifically about ones that make you a bit of an outlier and that are easy for you to see: "Oh, yeah, that's definitely why I don't [or maybe do?] vibe with that particular story.")
And that is so specific to me! If you have zero Calvinist background--if, say, your background is East Asian and you associate soulmate AUs with, like, red string of fate stuff instead of people being predestined to burn in hell for all eternity--you are going to have a very different reaction to soulmate AUs!
So that got me thinking about other tropes or plotlines that I just can't approach like a normal person because of my own personal baggage.
And here's the ultimate one: what happens to Donna on Doctor Who.
Donna was one of my favorite eras of the show--I found her completely delightful. But I have never been able to rewatch her season or even reblog gifsets on Tumblr because of how upset I was that the Doctor ended up wiping her memories in order to save her life.
Why? Because at that time my grandmother was dying of Alzheimer's. The idea of wiping someone else's memories, particularly without their consent, even if it was for "their own good" was so horrifying to me that it ruined Donna's run.
I think objectively that was a gross plotline, but I don't think most other people had the intense emotional reaction to it that I did.
But I will never be okay with memory alteration treated as okay. I just won't.
So what's a trope or storyline that you bring baggage to that completely shapes how you see it?
(Obviously the answer is: every trope or storyline because we all bring baggage to everything, but I'm talking specifically about ones that make you a bit of an outlier and that are easy for you to see: "Oh, yeah, that's definitely why I don't [or maybe do?] vibe with that particular story.")